A report published by The Commonwealth Fund in September 2013 evaluates how well state health care systems are working for low-income Americans and finds wide disparities in access to care and health care quality. The stark differences in health care access, quality, and outcomes in the report result in a substantial loss of lives and missed opportunities to improve health and quality of care. If all states reached the benchmarks set by the leading states, 30 million more low-income adults and children would have health insurance coverage, reducing the number of uninsured by more than half, the report shows.
Lower-income Americans in top performing states would be better off than higher-income people in lagging states, and millions of Americans would have better care and healthier lives if all states could do as well as the top performers, the report shows.
The report, “Health Care in the Two Americas: Findings from the Scorecard on State Health System Performance for Low-Income Populations,” and an online interactive map rank states on 30 indicators on such issues as access to affordable health care, preventive care and quality, potentially avoidable hospital use, and health outcomes. The report also examines how well the top-performing state in each category does for its high-income residents and sets that as a benchmark in order to assess the potential if all states could do as well.